Extract from "A Visit to California in Early Times"

Utah Historical Quartlery Volume 3, April 1930, Number 2

Extract from "A Visit to California in Early Times" by Col. J. B. Chiles

(Bancroft Library, 1878)

. , . After much preparation had been made for the journey Mr. Baldridge was detained on a large contract for building mills, and the company was formed with a man by the name of Bartleson 1 at the head, hence it was called the' Bartleson company, which consisted of thirty-one men and one woman and one child 2 It was considered almost rash for a woman to venture on so perilous a journey, but Mrs. Kelsey said, "Where my husband goes I can go, I can better stand the hardships of the journey than the anxieties for an absent husband," so she was received in the company and her cheerful nature and kind heart brought many a ray of sunshine through the clouds that gathered round a company of so many weary travelers. She bore the fatigue of the journey with so much heroism, patience, and kindness that there still exists a warmth in every heart for the mother and her child, that were always forming silvery linings for every dark cloud that assailed them. Thus on they traveled seven long and weary months, with no guide, no compass, nothing but the sun to direct them. They had learned through Dr. Marsh's letters 3 the latitude of San Francisco Bay, and they .thought the sun was sufficient to guide them there. But alas, the journey proved longer than they had supposed and they were tired and hungry. Long before they reached that point they had been subsisting on horse flesh almost entirely and that not of the choicest kind. But little game could be found in that part of the journey and other provision was not known. Imagine the wild delight of so many hungry men, one might say starving men, when they reached the Stanislaus river. . . .

References

1 Col. John Bartleson.

2 The number after parting with DeSmet.

3 An early settler in California who wrote letters to friends in the east, urging them to emigrate. His reception of the Bartleson party when they arrived in a starving condition from the mountains, was anything but hospitable. See Bidwell's "First Emigrant Train to California," Century Magazine, Vol. 19.